The candy company Haribo was put under fire this week after it was revealed that they were selling liquorice sweets shaped like traditional African masks.
The gummy treats were captured by a Twitter user, which showed the distorted faces in black, which many social media users considered “racist”.
According to NST.com, the company decided to stop the sales of the candy, which was being sold in Sweden and in Denmark.
The site reports:
Haribo said it had taken into account the critical comments made over the Internet in recent weeks.
“We decided that we could keep the product while removing the parts that certain consumers found offensive,” Haribo Sweden head Ola Dagliden told AFP.
The offending sweets are in the shape of ethnic masks or facial representations that resemble primitive African, Asian or Native American art.
They depicted what “a sailor who travelled the world” in days would have brought home in days gone by, Dagliden said.
“It wasn’t something we saw as having negative connotations.”
A picture of the sweets was removed from Haribo’s Swedish website on Friday afternoon, AFP discovered.
While the company is still facing a lot of criticism for their marketing move, at least they stopped sales.
SOURCE: NST.com | PHOTO CREDIT: Twitter
